A customer looks at products at a drugstore in downtown Yangon. Pic: Hein Latt Aung

THE Ministry of Health is planning to expand the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to help protect the people of Myanmar from dangerous foods and pharmaceuticals, government officials and health specialists said last week.

Dr Kyaw Lin, the director general of the FDA, said the main problem was the small staff.

“The FDA currently has only 100 staff, which is not enough to carry out strict monitoring processes to ensure the safety of the 50 million people in Myanmar,” he said. “In comparison, Thailand’s FDA has more than 1000 staff to monitor products there.”

A senior member of the Myanmar Pharmaceuticals and Medical Equipment Entrepreneurs Association (MPMEEA) who attended a meeting on food and drug safety in Nay Pyi Taw on July 14 said the government was deeply concerned about staffing shortfalls in the FDA.

“At the meeting the deputy minister of health, Professor Dr Mya Oo, said the FDA would be expanded soon to deal with the problem,” he said.

Dr Kyaw Lin said last week that the FDA’s responsibilities would also expand beyond its current role of monitoring food and drugs, to include screening cosmetics, consumer goods and medical equipment.

“The Ministry of Health is currently drafting a detailed plan for how the FDA should expand. When it is finished it will be submitted for approval. We hope the expansion plan will take effect soon,” he said.

Food safety has been a hot topic in international news in recent months in the wake of a spate of health problems in several countries related to products imported from China.

Traders said Myanmar is particularly vulnerable to substandard goods from China because it imported nearly US$1 billion worth of Chinese products in fiscal 2005-2006, while an unknown amount of goods also crosses the border illegally on a regular basis.

Ko Tin Myint, who has been involved in the trade of Chinese products for 15 years, said China produces goods to two different standards.

“Factories there make ‘Grade A’ products for US and European markets, which have strict quality control and in the case of pharmaceuticals are of sufficient potency. ‘Grade B’ products are cheaper and of a much lower standard, and are used in China or sent to developing countries including Myanmar,” he said.

Chinese authorities recently admitted that 1 percent of foodstuffs intended for US and European markets failed to meet minimum quality control standards, while 20pc of goods sold domestically were substandard.

A joint report released last month by the Asia Development Bank and World Health Organisation said that at least 300 million people in China suffer from food-borne illness every year.

China is the fourth biggest supplier of legal pharmaceuticals to Myanmar – behind India, Indonesia and Bangladesh – with unregulated drugs also coming across the border illegally.

Dr Maung Maung Lay, the chairman of the MPMEEA, said fake and substandard drugs posed a great danger to consumers in Myanmar.
“I believe that 10 to 20pc of Myanmar’s pharmaceuticals market is taken up by fake or flawed products,” he said.

Dr U Chit Soe, the project manager of the Quality Diagnosis Standard Treatment Malaria program under the Myanmar Medical Association, said a survey it conducted in 2004 found that 40pc of malaria drugs in the country were counterfeit.

“A United Nations survey in 2002 also showed that 60pc of so-called Amoxicillin antibiotic pills in the country contained no Amoxicillin at all,” he said.
Dr U Chit Soe warned that fake drugs constituted a grave danger to human health.

“If a drug contains less than the expected amount of a key ingredient, not only will the patient fail to recover from the disease but it will also encourage the virus to develop immunity to the drug, creating new multi-drug-resistant strains of the virus,” he said.

In addition, fake drugs might contain harmful ingredients such as lead, pesticides, hormones, arsenic or chemical dyes, which can lead to nervous system and kidney disorders as well as cancer, he said.

“Narcotic addicts choose death by buying heroin but poor patients buy drugs in the hopes of surviving. People shouldn’t take advantage of their honest beliefs,” Dr U Chit Soe said.

“Drug counterfeiting is in fact committing collective murder on millions of people around the world. It could eradicate the citizens of a nation,” he said.
The United Nations has estimated that within a few years, global sales of fake drugs could be worth $75 billion a year.